I recently bought a number of the best selling business books over the past several years to play in our office. The idea is to expose our team to some of the leading business thoughts of the day.
Note that I have read virtually every business book of note that has come out in the past 20 years. Regretfully, I have come to the conclusion that many of them are fluff, with the only objective being to find an easy way for the author to make money. Business success follows the reading of these books, but for the author(s) as opposed to the readers. Nevertheless, there are notable quality exceptions.
This is not one of them.
I had read the book Built to Last years ago when it came out, but could not recall how I felt about it. Once I fired up the CD, however, I recalled. I hated it.
Listening to it on tape, however, was even worse. The authors made the common mistake of narrating it themselves. As much as I dislike the book, I dislike the way the authors sound as they read it even more.
In short, I find the authors voices squirrelly. They imply, in their “get their ass kicked in school every day” voices, that they have figured out how businesses become successful from their academic offices. The combination of these types of voices and such an implication is tough to deal with.
They look at companies like Apple, IBM, etc., with an eye toward identifying why these companies became successful versus similar companies at the same time in the same industries that did not become as successful. What frustrated me about the book, however, and frustrates me even more with their squirrelly voices narrating it, it the complete lack of statiscally valid samples. It is essentially one company versus another, with subjective analysis such as one company has core values but another does not, or not as much, or the wrong ones, but (apparently) in the authors’ opinions.
This book should never have been a best seller. Additionally, the authors should have hired someone else to narrate it. Do yourself a favor, and skip both. I would, however, look for an abridged version or a web site that addresses the topic as alas, it was a highly successful business book and therefore the subject should at least be given a quick review. The only good thing that really came out of the book is the term BHAG, which is profiled on Wikipedia. Read this, and you have the only good content from the book, you’ve saved the time of reading all their other fluff, and you’ve saved yourself the cost of the book. You may also wish to read a related article in Fast Company that discusses how the identified “built to last” companies are not necessarily lasting.
We give a big thumbs down for “Built To Last” On audio CD. The content is generally not useful, little is to be learned from it, and the narration is squirrelly.
Sorry guys, I’m calling it like it is.